


Stolen Time

by GraduateGraduate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Coda, F/M, I didn't like the ending of Steve's arc, Sort Of, Tragic Romance, so i changed it, tragic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraduateGraduate/pseuds/GraduateGraduate
Summary: Steve's put the infinity stones back.  With his last job done, he can return to his time, but instead he finds himself on Peggy's doorstep.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought Steve's send-off at the end of Endgame was sweet, but a little out of character. This is how I pictured it.
> 
> I recommend listening to End of the Line (Henry Jackman) during Chapters 5 and 6.
> 
> <3 GG

Steve took a deep breath, held it for a beat, and then slowly let it go as he reached for the door knocker.He rapt it assertively against the door three times as butterflies did flips and swan dives in his stomach. 

“Just a second!”

Steve’s heart sped up at the sound of her voice, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as she stepped to the door, and stopped when she opened it.

Standing before him, eyes just as big, round and mesmerizingly brown as he remembered; lips maybe even redder than his memory served, was Peggy. 

“Steve?!”It took her a moment to recognize him, but when she did her eyes softened and she raised her eyebrows.“You’re alive!”

He was so relieved to see her again.The way he liked to remember her.Young and full of spunk and brilliance.Before time took her from him and her mind from the world.

Steve smiled, wider than he had in ages - maybe ever - and blinked against hot, stinging eyes.

“Hiya, Peg.”He went for casual.He felt anything but.

“You came back!”She normally covered her emotions so well - she was the epitome of unshakable professionalism, but he could see on her face that she was stunned.Her words slapped him with painful déjà vu.He swallowed it down.Before he could say anything, she put one hand on her hip and looked at him disapprovingly.“You’re late.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Steve said.He could feel the tips of his ears burning hot.He was even later than she knew.He took a small step towards her, and reached his hand out to the ends of her curls, twisting a tiny bit of her hair between his fingers.She was real.She was right here; alive, hardly any older than the last time he’d seen her, and she was real.“Peg,” Steve whispered her name as he cupped her face gingerly in his hands, and leant in.He paused just long enough to see the admiration and relief in her eyes surface, momentarily replacing her confusion and disbelief, before he closed the space between them and kissed her the way he should have 78 years ago.


	2. Chapter 2

The first three days blurred together for Steve.Time felt, even more than usual, like neary a distant, abstract concept.He gently brushed Peggy’s hair off her face so he could admire her peaceful face as she slept; the first rays of sun streaming across her pillow.

A slurry of elation, dread, and guilt churned in his stomach.It had been there, in constant motion, since the moment she’d opened the door.He hadn’t _lied_ to her, per se, but he certainly hadn’t told her the full truth of how he came to be standing on her doorstep.He told himself there wasn’t enough time to tell her the whole story.They’d already lost so much, it’d be a waste to spend the time they had together _now_ rehashing the details of the past.Or… future.It made his head spin a little to think about, so he just let _then_ be a hazy fog and tried to stay in the moment.

Besides, he just wanted Peggy and this little slice of domestic life they’d cocooned themselves in.It was all he’d ever wanted.This was as close to things going ‘back to normal,’ as they’d ever be.

 _Back to normal_.Steve laughed at the thought.What was that even?His normal was an asthmatic kid who realistically shouldn’t have survived past the age of ten who stepped into a radiation chamber a waif and stepped out a superhero.Normal was no longer really in his vocabulary.

Peggy stirred.Just the tiniest movement, before she sunk back into slumber.Steve smiled as he reached for his sketchbook and started committing the moment to paper and memory.

He’d tell her all of it eventually.He had the rest of their lives to tell her the whole of it.


	3. Chapter 3

There was something off about Steve.Peggy had noticed it the moment she’d first laid eyes on him, standing on her doorstep, looking at her with those eyes.They weren’t the eyes she remembered.The eyes she remembered were bright blue with determination and hope, compassion and will.That was still there, but there was also a tired sadness to them that she didn’t recognize.

But she had Steve back.For now, that was enough.Whatever was eating at him probably wasn’t half as bad as he thought it was, and he would tell her eventually.He was a good man, and an honest one.If there was something Steve wasn’t telling her, she trusted he had a damn good reason for it.

Steve passed her a mug of hot coffee and she traded him the newspaper for it.She cupped the mug in her hands and took a deep sip as she watched him unroll the paper.His reaction was the same as it had been every morning she’d handed him the paper, and it puzzled her.He’d see the date and then his eyes would bounce away like he shouldn’t have looked there.And then he would open the paper and pretend to be interested in its contents, but he appeared to be doing some mental calculations, and he felt far away.So far away.

Yesterday morning and the morning before she had silently observed his newspaper dance while eating her toast.She’d put it out of her mind as she kissed him goodbye, and hurried off to work.But it was Saturday, so they had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to unravel whatever it was he was thinking about when he pretended to read the newspaper.

“Where have you gone to?” she asked him.

Her voice seemed to startle him.It took him a second to focus in on her.

“What do you mean?”

She hadn’t expected him to sound _defensive_.“I mean where do you go when you’re reading the paper?You’re right here, but you feel so far away.What are you thinking about?"

“I’m not thinking about anything,” He furrowed his brows and stared hard at the page before him.“I’m reading the paper.” 

She could see the tips of his ears turning pink.She raised her eyebrow.

He sighed.It was heavy and sad.His shoulders slumped, uncharacteristically defeated, and he stared at his hands for a long moment.It reminded her of the way he’d looked right after his friend James had died. 

Peggy put her hand over his and squeezed.“It’s alright, Steve.You can tell me.” 

He shook his head ever so slightly, and she could feel his tears hit her knuckles.Her heart ached for him.Whatever it was, it wasn’t as bad as he thought.She was certain there wasn’t anything they couldn’t fix or figure out or work around together.

But she was wrong.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Steve told her everything. He told her about crashing into the Arctic. About waking up in a fake hospital bed and knowing everything about it was wrong - from the fact that he was waking up at all, to the way the nurse’s hair was curled just off fashion. Meeting Fury and the rest of the Avengers; SHIELD and Hydra; Ultron and Thanos. How he had put all the stones back where they belonged in space and time and was about to head back to 2023 when he found himself on her stoop. He recounted all of it while Peggy sat, silent and attentive, just taking it all in.

When Steve had talked himself out, Peggy let the silence hang between them as she processed all the impossibilities he’d just told her and forced herself to accept them as truth instead.

“Okay…” she said. “But what are you calculating when you see the date every morning?”

It wasn’t the question Steve expected.

“When you get the newspaper you unfurl it and try not to look at the date. But you always do. And when you do, you flip the pages too quickly to be reading them and you look like you want to be anywhere but here. Like it’s pure will keeping your arse in that chair. So if all of that is true - if it’s all over, or,” her face pinched as she tried to wrap her tongue around the semantics of his time travel. “Or it’s all currently playing out the way it does, why do you look like you’re planning a hike into Austria?”

Steve grimaced.

“Bucky.”

“Bucky? Like, your friend James, Bucky?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him? You know you can’t go back to the train and save him. …Right?” She furrowed her brows again and bit her lip as she puzzled through what he’d told her about the rules of time and the capabilities of the Pym Particles. “That’s still not your fault.”

“Peg,” Steve’s eyes met hers, and they were hollow and haunted. “He’s still alive.”


	5. Chapter 5

Peggy felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room.It all made so much sense.The weight in Steve’s shoulders and the sadness that never ever left his eyes.The things he’d seen, the people he’d lost, and now to be sitting in a New York apartment knowing that somewhere nearby his best friend was being experimented on, tortured, brainwashed and controlled-In hindsight, Peggy was shocked Steve had been able to sit still for three whole days pretending Bucky wasn’t strapped to a table somewhere being turned into a weapon.They both knew there was absolutely nothing he could do for Bucky - the Winter Soldier is and was and always would be - but to do nothing was not in Steve’s nature.

Peggy clenched her jaw and turned the next year, five years, ten years, thirty years over in her mind.

Her heart broke as she came to the only possible conclusion.

“You have to go.”

“I knew you’d understand.”

Peggy was confused by the relief in his voice.

“Will you come with me?”He spread the newspaper open across the table and started to draw a map over the printed words.“They had him housed here in Syberia.There were so many of them, it can’t have been easy to transport them all while keeping them frozen, so there can’t have been that many previous bunkers.We start here.”

Peggy’s tears came fast and hot.This was Steve.Her Steve was finally back.His sorrow had lifted now that he had a plan forming and a mission to go on.A fresh war to fight.She watched him, weeping as silently as she could.

It wasn’t until she audibly sobbed, clapping her hand over her mouth as she choked back the awful noise that threatened to tear her in two if she let it free, that he looked up from his frenzied work.

She shook her head, gulping for breath, trying to keep her broken heart inside of her.“You misunderstood me.You have to go back.”


	6. Chapter 6

Steve sat on a park bench staring at his reflection in the water, twisting a silver band on his finger.His blond hair shone in the sun, and his eyes were the only thing about him that betrayed how old he really was; how exhausted he was.

Bucky wordlessly sat down on the bench next to him.They let the silence hang between them for what felt like an eternity.

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

Bucky shook his head and laughed, his smile more genuine than Steve’s had felt in ages.“What for?Saving the universe?”

Steve shook his head.He couldn’t look at Bucky.“For not being able to save you.”

Bucky clasped him on the shoulder and looked him dead in the eye.“You’ve saved me more times than I can count.And this,” he shrugged his left shoulder, “Was never yours to stop.It’s not your fault.Never was.”He shook Steve’s shoulder a little until Steve met his gaze and attempted to believe him.“Ya punk.”He tousled Steve’s hair the way he had when they were kids; back when Steve was shorter than him and had far more fight in him than he had left in him now.

“Jerk,” Steve whispered with a small smile.

Sam joined them, sitting on Steve’s right.“So what now?”

Steve sighed.“I don’t know.But I think I’m done fighting for a while.There’s something I want you to have.”He pulled his shield from beneath the bench and handed it to a stunned Sam.

“You mean-,” Sam held the shield with both hands, just staring at it.

“Yeah, Cap.I’m retiring.You’ll do great.”

“Thanks, man.”Sam leaned the shield against the leg of the bench and nodded at Steve’s ring.“You wanna tell us about her?”

Steve sighed and smiled to himself.He thought about holding Peggy close, the scent of her hair, as they danced to old records in her living room after exchanging rings, just trying to soak each other in.They hadn’t gotten married, not really.How do you marry someone whose funeral you’ve already attended?But they had stolen a little extra time for their love; for each other; for themselves.And they had danced.

“No,”Steve looked back out over the water, letting the sun kiss his face.“I don’t think I do.”


End file.
